Hi all. I recently purchased a HV30 with the intention of using it at the Chicago Bears training camp, which I'll be attending for two weeks. My goal is to provide daily video recaps of the days activities to a couple of Bears message boards I belong to. As it is, I've spent a large chunk of change on building a new system for quick encoding so I'd like to try and keep the rest of my spending minimal.

Gear-wise, I'm not really sure what this situation calls for. Last year I took my Canon 30D with a 70-200mm lens and spent most of those two weeks on my knees snapping pictures (thank god for knee pads). Besides for a portable drive to transfer images to though, I didn't use any gear other than what came with the camera (all my shots were hand-held). Obviously with a camcorder, this approach won't do. I know I need a tripod/monopod but I'm not exactly sure what would be ideal for conditions I'll be shooting in.

Being only a fan, I'm not allowed on the field so I'm limited as to where I can shoot from. Added to that, once the camp fills up with people, your movement is severely restricted. If you've managed to get there early and gotten a good spot against the ropes, you can expect it to be taken the second you leave (unless you leave a chair there). That being said, here's the three vantage points I have to pick from:


First off, yeah, I know my horizon is off . This is a slight hill that runs parallel to the endzone of two of the four practice fields.



The following two pictures are of bleachers that border most of the practice fields. In all the pictures, you can see the yellow ropes that border the field; that's as close as you're allowed to get.






So those are my choices: the hill, bleachers, or ropes. Personally, I've been thinking of first shooting some wide shots from the bleachers for the first half of practice (which usually runs around an hour) and then moving down to the ropes to try and get some close-ups. One setup I'm leaning towards is the Bogen/Manfrotto 560B. As for sound, would a shotgun mic be adequate or would it capture too much of the crowd noise? I'm wondering if I should leave it out altogether.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to turn out something resembling these two vids (though these filmers obviously had field access):

http://www.filemojo.com/020670248005...p_Practice.ASF
http://www.filemojo.com/020892865634...ieMiniCamp.ASF